Specimen Days

Rita Dunn turned out to be red-haired, mid-forties, wearing a green silk jacket and heavy makeup. Dark eyeliner, blush expertly applied. Around her neck, a strand of amber beads just slightly smaller than billiard balls. She looked more like a retired figure skater than she did like a professor of literature.

"Hello," Cat said. She gave Rita Dunn a moment to adjust. No one ever said, You didn't sound black over the phone. Everybody thought it.

"Hello," Rita responded, and pumped Cat's hand enthusiastically. People loved talking to cops when they weren't in trouble.

"Thanks for taking the time to see me." "Glad to. Sit."

She gestured Cat into a squeaky leatherette chair across from her desk, seated herself behind the desk. Her office was a chaos of books and papers (disorderly sister). On the wall behind her, a poster of Whitman great lightbulb of old-man nose, small dark eyes looking out from the cottony crackle of beard and hair. In the window of Rita Dunn's office, a spider plant dangled its fronds before the vista of Washington Square Park. Had seamstresses once huddled at that window, trapped by flames? Had they stood on that sill and jumped?

"So," Rita Dunn said. "You want to know a thing or two about Mr. Whitman."

"I do."

"May I ask what exactly you're looking for?" "Relating to a case I'm investigating." "Does it have to do with the explosion?" "I'm sorry, I can't discuss the details."

"I understand. A case involving Walt Whitman. Is he in trouble?"

"I know it's unusual."

Rita Dunn steepled her fingers, touched them to her mahogany-red lips. Cat felt, abruptly, the force of her attention. It was palpable, a clicking-on, a jewel-like zap that rose in her perfectly outlined eyes. Right, Cat thought. You dress like this to fool the men, don't you? You're a stealth fighter.

"I like the unusual," Rita said. "I like it very much. Can you give me a hint about where to begin?"

"Let's say this. Could you give me some idea about Whitman's message to his readers?"

"His message was complicated."

"Got that. Just tell me whatever comes to mind."

"Hm. Do you know anything about him at all?"

"A little. I read him in college. I've been reading him again."

"Well. Okay. Whitman as you probably know was the first great American visionary poet. He didn't just celebrate himself. He celebrated everybody and everything."

"Right."

"He spent his life, and it was a long life, extending and revising Leaves of Grass. He published it himself. The first edition appeared in 1855. There were nine editions in all. The last, which he called his deathbed edition, appeared in 1891. You could say that he was writing the poem that was the United States."

"Which he loved."

"Which he did love."

"Would you call him patriotic, then?"

"It's not quite the right term for Whitman, I don't think. Homer loved Greece, but does the word 'patriotic' feel right for him? I think not. A great poet is never anything quite so provincial."

She picked up a pearl-handled letter opener, ran a fingertip along the blade. Aristocrats with tentative claims to thrones might have been just this impeccably overdressed, Cat thought. They might have possessed this underlayer of fierce, cordial vigilance.

Cat said, "But might someone, reading him today, interpret him as patriotic? Could Leaves of Grass be read as some sort of extended national anthem?"

"Well, you wouldn't believe some of the interpretations I've heard. But really, Whitman was an ecstatic. He was a dervish of sorts. Patriotism, don't you think, implies a certain fixed notion of right versus wrong. Whitman simply loved what was"

"Indiscriminately."

"Yes and no. He believed in destiny. He imagined that the redwood tree was glad for the ax because it was the tree's destiny to be cut down."

"So he had no particular sense of good and evil."

"He understood life to be transitory. He was not particularly concerned about mortality."

"Right," Cat said. "Is that helpful?"

"Mm-hm. Does the phrase 'In the family' mean anything to you?"

"Do you mean, do I recognize it from Whitman?"

"It's not from Whitman."

"I thought not. Though I can't claim to know every single line."

"Does it suggest anything to you?"

"Not really. Could you put it in some sort of context?"

"Say, as a declaration. If somebody said to you, 'I'm in the family.' In light of Whitman."

"Well. Whitman empathized with everyone. In Whitman there are no insignificant lives. There are mill owners and mill workers, there are great ladies and prostitutes, and he refuses to favor any of them. He finds them all worthy and fascinating. He finds them all miraculous."

"The way, say, a parent refuses to favor one child over the others?"

"I suppose you could say that, yes."

"What about the idea of working for a company?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"If somebody said, 'We all work for the company.' In light of Whitman."

"Hmm. I could go out on a limb a little, I suppose." "Please do."